Many sports, such as field hockey, tennis, American football etc are currently played on artificial turf (grass) sports pitches, which in general comprising a carrier as well as artificial fibres extending from said carrier. Said carrier is placed on a substrate which forms a stable subsurface base construction for the complete pitch installation.
Examples of sports that utilise such artificial turf pitch (ATP) constructions are:
Soccer
American Football
Australian Rules Football
Gaelic Football/Hurling (GAA)
Rugby Union/League
Hockey
Cricket outfields etc
In addition to sports pitches, the basic methodologies explained above also apply to other smaller areas in which artificial turf maybe used. For example:
Play grounds
Landscape/leisure areas
Cricket wickets
Bowls rinks
Tennis courts
Futsul courts
Education multiple use areas
The traditional base construction methodology for artificial turf systems has historically been based around the excavation of the existing sub-base and the subsequent replacement of this sub-base with graded rock and specially designed drainage systems.
There has been substantial development in construction methodologies and systems that are designed to limit and/or replace the use and design of traditional base construction system. These systems have been primarily designed to reduce the cost and to simplify the work untaken.
Due to the increasing awareness of human activity on the environment, the issue and practice of recycling has become more popular. In many cases governments are now legislating for the increased practice of recycling end of life and waste materials. This practice is seen at all levels of society and business, from road side recycling of household waste to legal obligations and quotas on businesses to recycle or dispose of waste in an environmentally responsible manner. This has also become a key political issue and the general trend of thinking is to reduce waste, carbon footprint, as well as waste to traditional landfill. National and local governments, plus private contractors have developed large infrastructures in order to divert some materials away from landfill for the purpose of recycling.
A new industry has developed which has been improving and developing methods of collection, separation and industrial processes that increase the ability to reclaim key materials from waste sources. One of the largest parts of the recycling industry is the recycling of plastics. However, these companies tend to process materials that are easy to convert and have the highest grades and re-sale value.
The vast majority of waste plastics is mixed (co-mingled) and as such is difficult to identify, sort, separate, clean and recycle and is therefore too expensive to process. In addition, the grades of these materials are very low and therefore have little re-sale value and are therefore regarded as “end of life” plastics.
Such ‘end of life’ plastic materials are typically in the form of packaging materials, moulded articles, products, profiles, sheet, coatings, fabrics or fibers and are found in general industrial, manufacturing, building and household waste etc. They can broadly be described as:                Plastic granules, beads, pellets, slivers, flakes, chips and noodles derived from recycling plastics. These types of plastics cover all families of polymers defined as plastics, such as, but not limited to the families of Polyolefin, Polyesters, Polyamides, Poly Vinyl Chlorides (PVC's), Polystyrenes and Polyurethanes found in general industrial, manufacturing, land transportation, aerospace, agricultural, horticultural, food and general packaging, building and household waste. Also, sources such as material reclaimed from landfill and material retrieved/harvested from the oceans in the form of flotsam and jetsam.        Plastic granules, beads, pellets, slivers, flakes and noodles derived from recycling artificial grass surfaces, domestic and industrial floorings. The types of plastics cover of the families of Polyolefin, Polyesters, Polyamides, PVC's, Polystyrenes and Polyurethanes.        
This material is referred to as “Feedstock” and there are vast quantities of this material available. Feedstock will generally consist of a random mix of plastic types, sizes, densities, colours; in a form of being flexible, rigid, semi rigid, filled or expanded in character or nature and are likely to include thin sheets, film, fibers, etc.
As such, to be made suitable for use in the formation of the invention the feedstock material must be processed using mechanical methods which result in a granulate with a more consistent size, bulk density and volume. Such processes are known as densification or agglomeration.
Densification or agglomeration is a process well known in the recycling plastics industry, in which plastics are chopped into fine flakes and then fed into a machine which uses friction to convert them into a semi molten state. The fine flakes join together increasing the mass and density of the material flowing through the machine. The mass of plastics exiting the machine is cooled, chopped, granulated or otherwise comminuted to a predetermined size. The densifying process includes one or more sieving stages whereby granulate which is considered to be outside the predetermined useful range is automatically returned to the infeed of the densifying process. In the vast majority of plastics recycling the aim for the processor is to ensure the plastic material been put into the process is of the same polymer type and the material is totally free from other polymer types and totally clean. As explained previously this requires a great deal of pre-processing to ensure that the final granules are fit for sale to the plastic industry, much of the waste plastic collected is either to dirty, too mixed or be at the end of the ability to re-recycle to be of any commercial value, and is therefore landfilled and burnt.